Other forms: grafting, grafted, grafts
To graft is to join a shoot of one plant onto the stem of another. Graft a rootstock, a grafted tree, take a graft.
Almost every apple tree in existence is grafted, because apples do not come true from seed — the top gives the variety and the root gives the size and hardiness. In surgery, a skin graft or bone graft moves tissue from one place to another. In British slang, graft is hard work — hard graft — and in American use it is political corruption, which are opposite meanings of one word.
1verbgraftTo join a shoot of one plant onto the stem of another.
“The gardener grafted a branch from an old apple tree onto a young root.”
2nounhardHard work, in British use.
“Getting the business started took years of hard graft.”
graft is a joining, or hard work.
Old French greffe meant a stylus, from Greek graphein, to write, because a cut shoot looks like a pointed pen. Graph and graphic come from the same writing.
Ancient Greek
γραφείον
Latin
graphium — stylus
Old French
greffe — stylus
Middle English
graffe
English, today
graft
Built from
From Middle English graffe, from Old French greffe (“stylus”), from Latin graphium (“stylus”), from Ancient Greek γραφείον, from γράφειν (“to write”); probably akin to English carve. So named from the resemblance of a scion or shoot to a pointed pencil. a doublet of graphium. Compare graphic, grammar.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Trees & Flowers